There have been over the past number of years many developments in the delivery of electronic or online advertising. The revenue models of many ecommerce and social networking and other related websites, having now established or built out a user base, are reliant in varying degrees upon advertising sales and revenue, and developing or expanding the advertising revenue base is a key part of the commercial success of those entities.
As a baseline, website and online advertising has been mature for some time in terms of the basic presentation of advertisements, coupons or other advertising materials in static fashion via web interfaces or the other app interfaces of the underlying sites. Hyperlinking or provision of other direct or passthrough access to advertisements has been done in the context of web and app development for some time, and it is upon this basic concept that many of the alterations or additive methods created by online content providers to make their advertising content more relevant or otherwise more consumed or consumable have been based.
One of the traditional methods, online or otherwise, in terms of making advertising more consumable to the selected user audience is to target the content or availabliity of that advertising more carefully to its desired audience. For example, in the context of many web sites or other online businesses one of the primary ways they first started to make their displayed advertising more relevant to a consuming user was to target the material which is displayed to the user based on location details or other preferences stored within that user's user profile on a website. This allowed for example for a sales web site to display pricing or availability, or other advertising information related to certain products or services, to a logged in user based that user's preferences stored within their profile on that website. Making a consolidated user preference log or profile available to many websites related to a single user is one of the limitations which would have been first experienced in this type of approach, but this did provide a starting point in terms of the rendering of user-targeted advertising material. An extension of this user profile preference targeting method for ecommerce websites was also to track website interactions of the user in relation to their profile such that for example where a sales website tracked that a particular user had browsed a particular category of goods or services, advertising or offers related to that area could be displayed. Many fairly elaborate methods of user profile/preference targeting have now been developed and are used by many online businesses in this fashion.
A next step in the evolution of targeted online advertising has been enabled with the proliferation in smart phones and other web enabled personal devices through which website and other related categories of electronic content can be accessed and consumed. Wide availability of smart devices which include GPS or other location technology, allowing for the use of the devices location by developers in development of software therefore, has made the targeting of advertising even more possible and accurate, since the location of the browsing device can be used to match up advertising content as it is displayed to be most geographically relevant. For example by knowing the location of your device, an advertising server could serve coupons or advertisements for the closest restaurant or business in a selected category, even along with directions or other locational information. Availability of locationally aware devices has made targeted display of advertising material much more useful in a business context since it can provide an additional level of granularity in the drive which can be accomplished to the advertising of a particular vendor. Even beyond ecommerce websites, in the context of social networking applications, social networking interfaces can be developed which show or provide interaction with the “closest” of your friends.
Use of user profile preferences, along with geographic location data, are two key concepts in the delivery of targeted advertising which it is believed can be built upon in the context of the present invention in the provision of a new advertising method.
The second general concept or direction in online business models which it is desired to evolve or expand in the context of the present invention is the incorporation of social networks more deeply into many online business models, and into the online interactions and lives of many smart phone or online users. The use by most people in the 18-40 age demographic of multiple social networks in their daily lives makes it more interesting and important to try and develop advertising methods which can use the content in a consumer's social network as another potential component in the delivery of targetted advertising material. Social networking websites and providers have invested significant resources in the development of targeted advertising methods based upon the large amounts of user profile and preference data that they accumulate. For example, advertising selected based upon this deep user profile and history data is or can be displayed to a user in the context of their social network interaction experience.
In addition to the relevance of social network contents as another layer of targeting accuracy in the delivery of advertising material, the provision of opportunities for display of commercial advertising material which have the look and feel or interface of social networks may make the advertising material displayed or provided more consumed. Social networking sites such as Facebook have, as a part of their revenue model, developed and provided gaming platforms on which they or third parties have or can develop games and other applications which can, in whatever permissible fashion is provided vis-a-vis the underlying user profile(s), allow for multiple users to play such games or interact through these systems. Widespread use and acceptance of games and similar apps deployed upon these social network platforms provides it is beleived an opportunity for an alternate advertising method which would incorporate many of these concepts.
A “fun” approach to the provision of relevant locationally targeted advertising or similar information, which took a look and feel approach which is similar to user-accepted social network gaming apps, would it is thought be widely accepted by users and is beleived would be welcomed by advertisers as well who be eager to participate in the provision of their advertising media using such a method and platform.